The embodiments herein relate to Materials Recovery Facility processes and systems for processing waste materials.
Waste materials such as mixed plastics, rubbers and food wastes contain a high moisture content, which leads to the decay and growth of bacteria within the waste. The high moisture content of wastes limit its ability to be processed so that it can be converted into energy or used as raw materials in other applications. Waste materials that cannot be processed for reuse contribute to the growing volume of trash in landfills across the country.
Currently, there are several systems that process waste materials for reuse such as tunnel dryers. However, these systems are limited because they are bulky machines that often extend up to 100 feet long. This makes it impractical and/or difficult to operate these systems when space is limited. In addition, these systems are not economically feasible because they require significant amounts of natural resources such as fossil fuels, coal, natural gas, wood, or the like, to process the waste into reusable blocks. As a result, these systems are not environmentally friendly because the combustion of materials such as fossil fuels and natural gas emit greenhouse gases into the environment. Finally, these systems are not efficient because they do not effectively remove all moisture from the waste materials, which results in additional costs and/or processing time to convert the waste materials into a form that can be reused.
As such, there is a need in the industry for a cost-effective and efficient system for processing waste materials for reuse that eliminates the emission of greenhouse gases and overcomes the limitations of the prior art described above.